About

Kim Kei evokes the body without depicting the figure as a form. The body is implied by mimicking the skin's surface and the gesture of the form depicted. Our skin contains the interior and is the point of contact with everything outside ourselves specifically one another. Kei creates sculpted, simulated skins that are inked and pressed to paper leaving a precise impression. The paper captures the cracks and wrinkles, the body's acquired marks though time, injury, repair, and illness. Encompassing spaces between vulnerability, invasiveness and tenderness, the unnameable forms unfurl, contort, meet, and touch seemingly of their own vitality. The opportunity for empathy in looking closely and the intimacy being seen transmutes shame into a resilient, forceful affirmation. Creases strike through the form revealing what we attempt to keep hidden bringing these unruly parts of ourselves fully to the surface communicating a body in motion. Kei (b.1981, Corpus Christi, TX) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has had solo shows at Brandstater Gallery (Riverside, CA) (2016), Alter Space (San Francisco) (2015), and Bustamante Gill, (Los Angeles) (2014).